


(even in the tremor i feel) a stillness growing

by salvage



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Episode: s02e18 Jones, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Trauma and recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 07:47:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18567007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvage/pseuds/salvage
Summary: They had both grown up, but Ethan seemed to have done so more than Spencer had: the loose sprawl of his body exuded the confidence of someone who knew his place in the world, knew himself, in a way that Spencer now didn’t believe he ever would. Ethan’s beard only half-hid the planes and angles of his face, the boyish roundness of his cheeks long since smoothed into sharp cheekbones and a defined jawline. Even the gap at the collar of his shirt seemed deliberate, the tiny visible vee of undershirt somehow intentional. To what purpose Spencer could only guess; surely it was not meant to distract him, though that’s what it was doing. His eyes kept drifting to Ethan’s throat and the dip between his collarbones, the smooth tan skin below which worked tendons, pink muscles, the complex highways of artery and vein.





	(even in the tremor i feel) a stillness growing

**Author's Note:**

> [shows up to criminal minds 12 years late with starbucks]
> 
> title from lady lamb, "even in the tremor." thanks to d and suzelle.

After the third call, he set his phone to silent. Ethan, slouched in the chair across from Spencer’s, gave him a narrow-eyed appraising look as he guiltily slid his phone back into his pocket.

They had both grown up, but Ethan seemed to have done so more than Spencer had: the loose sprawl of his body exuded the confidence of someone who knew his place in the world, knew himself, in a way that Spencer now didn’t believe he ever would. Ethan’s beard only half-hid the planes and angles of his face, the boyish roundness of his cheeks long since smoothed into sharp cheekbones and a defined jawline. Even the gap at the collar of his shirt seemed deliberate, the tiny visible vee of undershirt somehow intentional. To what purpose Spencer could only guess; surely it was not meant to distract him, though that’s what it was doing. His eyes kept drifting to Ethan’s throat and the dip between his collarbones, the smooth tan skin below which worked tendons, pink muscles, the complex highways of artery and vein.

“Someone really wants you,” Ethan said.

Spencer startled. “What?”

“That phone keeps ringing,” Ethan explained, and he nodded toward where Spencer still held it in his pocket.

“Oh.” Spencer took his hand off the phone and self-consciously wrapped both hands around his snifter of whiskey. “Yeah.” The familiar anxiety rose up within him but he tamped it down, easier now that he had some alcohol in him. He was deliberately ignoring it, he reminded himself sternly. He was trying to see if he even could.

It was easier with Ethan sitting across from him, the fine material of his trousers taut over his splayed knees, the bright glimpse of his undershirt drawing Spencer’s eyes up the slim lines of Ethan’s body. Ethan leaned forward, setting his empty glass on the table beside them, and he stayed like that with his elbows braced on his thighs. Like this, the light fell across his face differently, highlighting the strong line of his nose, one sharp cheekbone. He was, Spencer realized abruptly, extremely handsome.

The thought was so shocking that it overwhelmed even Spencer’s anxiety, his mind’s constant background hum of _rough wood walls, the electric buzz of the computers, the persistent ache of his bound limbs and the itch of matted blood in his hair and across the side of his face_. He was just here, in this bar, sitting across from Ethan with his soft dark hair and long slim pianist’s fingers loosely laced between his knees.

Ethan tipped his head to the side a little, looking with concern at Spencer. “I think you went somewhere for a second,” he said. The faint accent he had acquired living in New Orleans disappeared from his voice.

Spencer shook his head. “Actually, the opposite.” He found himself almost smiling into the amber dregs of whiskey in his glass. “It’s—well.” The surprise had passed, though, and it crept back in: the drag of dirt and leaves against his back, rucking his hair; the shock of the blow echoing from the sole of his foot up to his knee, jarring his bones, setting his skin on fire; the prick of the needle in his arm. The sweet rush of the dilaudid. “Something, uh, pretty bad happened to me.”

Ethan nodded like he knew. Maybe Spencer was more book-smart than Ethan, but Ethan had always been good at reading people in a way that Spencer wasn’t. Cleverly, too, Ethan waited him out.

Spencer moved to brush his hair out of his face except his hand was still holding the mostly empty snifter so he ended up kind of waving it in front of his face, looking at the floor, Ethan’s worn but polished leather oxfords, the slim shadowed columns of his ankles that disappeared into the hems of his trousers. “It’s. I kind of almost died?”

“Spencer,” Ethan said. His voice was soft and low and almost unbearably tender.

“I mean. I’m fine.” Spencer forced himself to place the glass on the table beside Ethan’s but then he was left with his hands, pale and empty, and the inescapable tell of twisting them together in his lap.

“We don’t have to have this conversation here,” Ethan said slowly.

Spencer looked at him. In the dim yellow lights of the bar Ethan’s skin looked warm, his hair glossy and barely tamed, his beard so soft. Spencer nodded.

They walked into the warm evening together, the quiet background noise of the bar giving way to the sounds of the street: car engines and raised voices, the faraway whisper of music from the open doors of bars and restaurants, human sounds all. Entirely unlike the wilderness-quiet of the empty cabin, the electronic hum of the line of laptops, the—

Ethan walked close to Spencer’s side. When he had leaned close to Spencer at the bar he had smelled clean, freshly washed clothes, a kind of faintly spicy soap. Spencer probably smelled like anxiety sweat under his sweater. It was easier to talk like this, shoulder to shoulder, eyes fixed on the sidewalk in front of them as they walked two, three blocks, turned, walked another few blocks. The night was warm and humid.

“It was my fault, really,” Spencer began, and Ethan scoffed.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

Spencer shrugged. He told Ethan the broad strokes: the capture, the cabin, the rescue. He left out the cameras, the dilaudid, the slimy feeling of the grip of the revolver in his sweaty hands. So condensed it was over by the time they reached Ethan’s apartment, a loft in a converted old red brick warehouse. Ethan stepped aside to let him enter the building. A wide-open stairwell, gunmetal gray stairs, a bank of windows reflecting the Edison bulbs that lit the entryway. Their footsteps sounded loud in the empty space as they ascended.

Then Spencer stood in the foyer of Ethan’s spacious apartment, wide windows and high ceilings, exposed pipes and I-beams creating a kind of industrial firmament up above them. An upright piano stood against one wall, surrounded by a constellation of other musical instruments, guitars and keyboards, a violin and a banjo, as well as something Spencer suspected was a theremin.

“How did you get the piano in here?” Spencer asked.

Ethan looked up from removing his shoes. “Through the windows. Had to take out three of ‘em.”

“Oh.” Spencer felt strange and out of place, as though coming here was a mistake.

“Want another drink?” Ethan asked, drifting over to the open-plan kitchen. It was lovely, chrome fixtures and white countertops. Spencer thought about his own small prewar apartment in DC, the upstairs neighbors who vacuumed all night, the probable mouse infestation.

“Probably better if I don’t.” Spencer toed off his shoes, placing them beside Ethan’s, suddenly self-conscious about his mismatched socks as he padded across the hardwood floor to the kitchen area.

“Fair enough.” Ethan was leaning against the counter, looking at Spencer, not moving to get himself a drink, and Spencer stopped in front of him, not quite looking at his face. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Spencer smiled a little in the direction of Ethan’s open shirt collar. “I’m sorry too.” He felt hideously aware of his hair, stringy across his forehead where he’d spent all day fidgeting with it, and his socks, and the way he could never seem to drape his gangly body across any surface the way Ethan seemed to be able to do, effortless and unselfconscious.

“Are you gonna stay with the Bureau?”

Spencer shrugged. “What else can I do?”

“Anything.” Ethan said it like he really believed it. “Anything you wanted. You were always the best at whatever you did.”

“Just because I always beat you,” Spencer said with a real smile, and he glanced up at Ethan, and Ethan was smiling, too, and his skin looked just as warm as it had at the bar.

“Not always,” Ethan returned. The moment stretched taut between them, Ethan’s dark eyes, the faint street noise filtering through the open windows, the buzz in all of Spencer’s limbs that he could no longer blame on the alcohol.

He expected it to be like the first shot of dilaudid, a kind of warm, relaxing fuzziness that swept over him from inside to out, an insidious comfort that drew him into its amnesiac embrace. But it wasn’t—he didn’t feel distant or detached, there was no overwhelming darkness that rose up to claim him. There were simply Ethan’s lips on his, the soft prickle of Ethan’s beard against Spencer’s upper lip and chin, the sweet tight press of Ethan’s hand on his waist where he drew him in. Spencer stopped breathing, stopped moving, sure that his heart would have stopped beating if it could: everything in him going still and silent, focused solely on the soft dry press of Ethan’s mouth against his. Ethan felt so close and so warm, his puffs of breath and the movement of eyelashes against his cheek, the quiet sound of their mouths parting, the shift of his clothing against his skin, all the little human flutterings that filled the intimate space between them.

Spencer took in a quick sharp breath against Ethan’s mouth, lightheaded, suddenly, from proximity or lack of oxygen or both. Ethan drew back a little, opening his eyes, but Spencer found himself pressing forward, chest to chest and stomach to stomach, the layers of clothing between them barely masking the heat of Ethan’s body against Spencer’s. Spencer’s hands found Ethan’s waist. Ethan hummed a soft, amused noise when Spencer crashed their mouths together again.

Ethan’s body was taut but yielding when Spencer tentatively shuffled one foot between Ethan’s, arching against him: the hot hard planes of his body beneath the fine silken material of his clothes, the easy way their legs interlaced, the mobile aliveness of him as he moved to thread his other hand into Spencer’s hair. Gently, Ethan tugged Spencer’s head to the side, slotting their mouths together so the kiss deepened, slick and hot. A desperate little noise caught in Spencer’s throat.

It was almost overwhelming to be held like this, between Ethan’s slim strong fingers splayed around the back of Spencer’s head, the dip where his spine connected to his skull, and the hand at his waist, hot even through Spencer’s sweater. Spencer felt barely in control of himself, his numb fingers and thrumming pulse, the unfamiliar way his lips parted for the dart of Ethan’s tongue, as though his body knew something he didn’t: how to make space for another body entwined with his; how to drag his hands up the slim column of a waist, feeling, below the slide of clothing, the tension of muscles and curve of ribs; how to accept pleasure.

With a last, almost chaste kiss, off center to Spencer’s lips so that he felt the soft brush of Ethan’s beard against his cheek, Ethan drew back just enough for them to look at one another again. Spencer felt unfit to be looked at, flushed and wild, possessed by some strange spirit, and his eyes drifted away toward the white countertop behind Ethan, illuminated by the soft glow of the track lighting.

“Are you okay?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah,” Spencer said reflexively, then realized it would be more convincing if he could look Ethan in the eyes.

“Spencer,” Ethan said, canny, but he softly rubbed his thumb along the side of Spencer’s neck, in the little divot below his earlobe and the hinge of his jaw.

“It’s just, it’s a lot?” Spencer winced a little; that wasn’t right. “It’s not bad.” Spencer looked at him then, trusting that Ethan would read the arousal obvious in his wide pupils and flushed cheeks, his quick pulse and kiss-pinked mouth. He couldn’t seem to stop touching the side of Ethan’s ribcage, hand splayed flat across the soft material of his shirt, some strange and very foreign part of his brain insistently requesting that he untuck the shirt entirely and spread his fingers over Ethan’s hot skin.

“I get it,” Ethan said. “We don’t have to go any—”

“Oh my god—” Spencer said.

“—further, it’s okay if—”

“—no, I actually want—”

They stopped speaking at the same time. Ethan looked at Spencer, so patient. Spencer cleared his throat, his momentary courage having abruptly fled.

“…This,” Spencer finally finished. “You. I mean, not in the kitchen, ideally—”

Ethan started laughing, the skin around his eyes crinkling, the white line of his teeth visible as he smiled, open-mouthed, and Spencer laughed, too, tipping forward so he tucked his face into the joint of Ethan’s neck and shoulder, threading his arms around Ethan’s waist.

“We can relocate,” Ethan said. Spencer could feel the soft bass rumble of Ethan’s voice reverberating through his own chest. Ethan wrapped his arm more securely around Spencer’s back, holding him, and Spencer breathed.

_Oh_ , Spencer thought, stupidly, as he relaxed against Ethan. He had always been a little shorter than Ethan, which as a teenager he had hoped was due to the few years that separated them but had turned out to just be biology, and for the first time he was glad for it, fitting himself against the slim but solid mass of Ethan’s body. He felt each of Ethan’s breaths, the minute unconscious movements of his arms where he held Spencer, the quick thrum of his pulse in the vein of his throat just below the skin.

If Spencer turned his head just a little to the side he would be able to kiss that skin, the smooth stretch of Ethan’s throat below his soft beard, so he did, parting his lips a little to the pulse point. Ethan stilled. Spencer moved up to where the vein disappeared under the hinge of Ethan’s jaw, soft skin, underlying bone, and, feeling a little insane but unable to stop himself, he darted his tongue out to taste. Ethan suppressed an unmistakable shudder.

“Was that bad?” Spencer murmured into the soft curls of Ethan’s hair.

“The opposite of that,” Ethan said, his voice a little rough, and he dragged Spencer up to kiss him on the mouth, almost frantic, gasping as the kiss broke and reformed.

Untethered, Spencer grabbed a handful of the silken material of Ethan’s shirt and tugged, scrabbling Ethan’s clothing aside to splay his hands on the hot skin of Ethan’s back. Ethan arched into him. They were both half-hard, rocking their hips together.

“Okay,” Ethan breathed, but then he kissed Spencer again as though he couldn’t help it, bringing both of his hands up to thread his fingers through Spencer’s hair. “Okay, come to bed,” he said, and he kissed Spencer, closed mouth, his beard soft against Spencer’s upper lip. “Come to bed with me, please.”

“Yeah,” Spencer said faintly, “okay,” and he went.

Ethan’s bed was wide and white, unmade as though Ethan hadn’t planned on his apartment being seen by anyone tonight, and something felt terribly intimate about the rumpled sheets and the pillows that still held little depressions in the middle where Spencer imagined Ethan, lips parted, unselfconscious in sleep, dark hair mussed against the pillowcase. Spencer had become used to the insides of other people’s homes, their worn furniture and framed photographs of loved ones who were strangers to Spencer, or worse, who were dead, whose vivacious faces he had to hold in his mind alongside their clouded eyes and mottled, blood-smeared skin. The feeling of a foreign plastic cup in his hands, its outside still beaded with moisture from the tap. But Spencer wasn’t in one of those homes now, feeling like an anthropologist in an unfamiliar culture, divining meaning from battered knickknacks and worn-thin throw pillows. Ethan was warm and cautious behind him, slipping his arms around Spencer’s waist. He was alive and he wanted Spencer, his eyes dark and clear, blood pulsing beneath his skin. There were no leaves, no smudges of dirt or detritus, no—dried sweat and clotted blood—

Spencer jolted into the present, Ethan’s arms, his bed, the faint street noise that filtered in through the windows.

“Hey,” Ethan was saying softly.

“Sorry,” Spencer said. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“Are you good?” Ethan asked; Spencer knew what he really meant.

Spencer turned to face him. There was only Ethan: Ethan’s soft beard and curling dark hair, the rucked-up collar of his shirt ( _I did that_ , Spencer thought, giddy), the sweet pressure of his hands on Spencer’s waist.

“I’m fine.”

Ethan searched his face for a moment but seemed to find whatever he was looking for because they kissed again, hot and deep. Taking the initiative, Spencer drew away just far enough to peel off his sweatervest and toss it to the foot of the bed. He mentally braced himself to feel weird about it, this performative disrobing, both the act itself and what it signified, but Ethan’s hands went immediately to the front of his shirt and he just felt warmed and thrilled by the delicate, precise motions of Ethan’s slim musician’s fingers easing the buttons out of their holes. When he had finished with Spencer’s shirt Ethan tugged up his undershirt, laying his hands on the soft skin of Spencer’s stomach, the little dip of his waist, kissing him again, again. 

Ethan’s hands were alluringly callused as they skated over Spencer’s waist to the small of his back, pulling him close, and Spencer could feel the fine material of Ethan’s shirt against the exposed skin of his stomach. Ethan touched him gently but deliberately, unafraid to break him as J.J. and Garcia and Morgan seemed to be now, skirting around him with an infuriating wariness. He had barely even known he could be touched like this, hungrily yet tenderly, with attentiveness not for pain but for pleasure.

He shrugged out of his unbuttoned shirt and let it fall to the floor, uncharacteristically; Ethan didn’t need to know all his neuroses and compulsions. He grabbed his undershirt by the hem, too, and pulled it over his head, inside out, mussing his hair so it fell in disarray over his forehead. Ethan brushed it back with one hand, fingers tangling in the curls, smoothing it behind Spencer’s ear though it just tumbled forward again. Spencer was a little too skinny, a little too pale, he knew; he’d accepted even earlier than most that his body would never be particularly noteworthy, so he did only what he had to to be good at his job. Yet when Ethan’s hands splayed over Spencer’s bony shoulders it felt like maybe this was enough, these sharp collarbones and the visible slats of his ribs, slim throat and slimmer arms, the soft curve of his belly.

Ethan shed his shirts almost as an afterthought, unable to look away for too long from the line of Spencer’s jaw and the tendons of his throat, his prominent breastbone and pale arms. Ethan’s chest was softly furred with dark hair and his shoulders and arms were toned. Because he could touch, Spencer did, opening his palm over the swell of Ethan’s pectoral. He couldn’t tell if the frantic pounding he heard was Ethan’s heart or his own. When Ethan kissed him Spencer’s body felt electrified by the vast expanse of skin that touched his, intentionally and unintentionally: even the inadvertent brush of Ethan’s chest to Spencer’s sparked something alight within him. Wildly, he thought of electrical fires, baking soda.

With a kind of reckless abandon Spencer unbuttoned his trousers, his skin prickling with embarrassment despite the fact that that was what they were here for, wasn’t it? He felt, as he so often did, like he was a robot wearing a person suit, like there was some insurmountable gap between the things other people found instinctive and the things he did; and he felt this more intensely when Ethan caught his thin wrists, tugging them down to hang empty at Spencer’s sides.

“Oh, I—” Spencer began, but Ethan quieted him.

“Shh.” Ethan kissed him again, managing somehow to make the shushing not feel rude or condescending. Perhaps it was just the gentle care with which he kissed Spencer, soft and thorough, his tongue parting Spencer’s lips and then drawing away, almost enough for Spencer’s achingly hungry body.

Ethan backed Spencer against the bed and guided him down, against the rucked up sheets, and the bed smelled like Ethan, his soap and his sweat, so much that Spencer could hardly stand it. He dragged Ethan down with him; he was small but wiry, he knew, and Ethan’s eyes looked dark and deep as he went willingly, bracing himself over Spencer, darting his tongue over his lower lip. Spencer felt himself flush, full-body, as Ethan just looked over him.

“Okay,” Spencer said, half from nervousness and half from impatience, and he reached up and buried a hand in the soft curls of Ethan’s hair.

Ethan kissed Spencer’s mouth, the soft brush of his beard familiar now but still novel, and he kissed his cheek, and he kissed the line of his jaw where stubble was just beginning to come in, and when Spencer tipped his head back against the bed Ethan kissed the soft underside of his jaw and the jut of his Adam’s apple and hollow at the base of his throat. His beard prickled strangely against the untouched skin of Spencer’s right collarbone, the flat of his chest, the bony rise of his shoulder.

Anxiety rushed over Spencer, a base animalistic panic so consuming he couldn’t even make himself move, to—what? Skitter up the bed, half-dressed, and say, “Sorry, I just remembered I should be at work after all,” hastily shielding the thin scar-pricked skin at the inside of his arm from view? So he laid there, heart beating rabbit-fast, and Ethan’s soft beard and gentle mouth drifted over the sensitive skin of his upper arm, the joint of his elbow, and down. Spencer closed his eyes, knowing it was the childish way out, unable to stop himself from experiencing a bone-deep regret that it all turned out like this.

“Oh,” Ethan said, “baby,” and Spencer could feel the short shallow breath Ethan took against his skin before kissing, too, the track marks that dotted the visible veins beneath Spencer’s pale skin.

Ethan moved up Spencer’s prey-still body, jarred only by the rapid beating of his heart, and paused above him, brushed-back hair now falling in loose individual curls across his face. His eyebrows were drawn together in sympathy. This was not how Spencer had imagined this going.

“It was—when I was,” Spencer began, feeling his stillness break into fine but uncontrollable tremors.

Ethan hushed him, murmured, “Baby,” against his mouth, and Spencer closed his eyes again and fell apart.

There was something freeing about it, someone else knowing and still somehow staying with him, caging him in with strong forearms on either side of his head and kissing him, kissing him, kissing him. Spencer shook and shook.

“Shh, baby,” Ethan murmured again. “It’s okay.” He was a comforting weight atop Spencer’s hectic, trembling body, holding him still, imparting solidity to Spencer’s volatile form. With one hand he petted Spencer’s hair.

“Sorry,” Spencer said, almost reflexively, as he came back to himself: his shaky, useless limbs; the solid warmth of Ethan on top of him; the mussed sheets with the soft animal scent of sleep, of Ethan’s soap and sweat.

“Nothing to be sorry for.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Spencer said with a weak little laugh.

“Course it is,” Ethan said while moving languidly over Spencer’s body once again, mapping his throat and chest with hands and mouth as though he knew Spencer couldn’t really have this conversation while looking at him. “Or are you not human, too, FBI profiler?”

Spencer winced. “Can we not talk about my job in bed?”

Ethan huffed a quiet laugh into the side of Spencer’s neck. “Anything else you’d like to do instead?”

“Uh,” Spencer said. The way Ethan’s hands moved over his skin felt like a drug.

“I won’t do anything you don’t want to,” Ethan said, sitting up to look at Spencer properly. He smoothed his hair back where it had fallen across his face, lifting one arm, pectoralis major and deltoid and biceps brachii shifting under his skin as he moved. He was flushed, aroused but trying to downplay it, likely so Spencer wouldn’t be intimidated or overwhelmed. His mouth looked wet and very red and Spencer thought of the prickly softness of Ethan’s beard on his tender skin.

“Oh, no,” Spencer said, “I want to.”

“Good.” Ethan’s voice was soft with—relief? “Good,” he said again, bringing his hands to lie flat on Spencer’s torso, fingertips to the curve of Spencer’s ribcage, palms to his soft stomach. His hands felt hot and very large, as though he could span the breadth of Spencer’s waist, a thought that Spencer was surprised to find arousing. The waistband of Spencer’s trousers hung a little loose around his hips and Ethan slipped his fingertips under it and unfastened the zipper, allowing his knuckles to gently brush the line of Spencer’s half-hard cock, sending sparks of arousal skittering up his spine.

Spencer tensed, looking down the pale frail frame of his body to watch Ethan’s hands touch the sensitive hollows beside his prominent hipbones and the soft down of hair on his lower belly. It seemed voyeuristic to be watching, obscene somehow though it was his own body, and he had to glance up at the network of silver pipes and beams that enmeshed the dark ceiling as Ethan drew his cock from his underwear.

“Oh—” Spencer’s mouth fell open, some involuntary sound escaping him, and he scrabbled at the sheets as his back arched. He rolled his head to the side as though to escape the onslaught of sensation. “That’s, oh,” he babbled, breathless, trying to master himself, “that’s different.” Ethan hummed in vague assent, then he turned his wrist in a way that had Spencer arching again, clutching at the sheets. His body was like a strange and unfamiliar animal whose reactions Spencer watched from the outside, taut muscles and reaching limbs, gasping, desperate noises drawn from its throat.

“Good different?” Ethan asked, slyly.

“Hnn,” Spencer replied, and then Ethan took him into his mouth.

He hadn’t—it hadn’t felt like this, any of the furtive times he had, in the half-darkness of a series of dorm rooms, then in his DC apartment, gotten himself off. He had always been uncomfortably aware of the base animalness of the body, too distracted by the strange workings of his own anatomy to really enjoy touching himself. It was, by turns, alien and boring, so he had mostly given up on the endeavor as one more in the vast range of human experiences that were allowed to other people, but not to Spencer Reid.

This was not like that. This was Ethan’s broad hands splayed over his trembling body and Ethan’s mouth around his cock, slick and hot, not so tight as his hand but encompassing and mobile in an insistent, intoxicating way. The onslaught of sensation chased from his mind the self-conscious objectivity that alienated him from relaxing into any feeling.

When Ethan drew off it was with a wet sound that Spencer found disgusting and thrilling at once. “God,” Ethan murmured against the curve of Spencer’s hipbone, still slowly jerking him with a saliva-slick hand, “look at you.”

Spencer couldn’t imagine, didn’t even want to think about how he looked, sweating and flushed, exposed obscenely, his trousers still rucked around his hips. He felt overwarm and frantic. He felt like a different person entirely.

“God,” Ethan said again, absently, and then he leaned back on his heels to look at Spencer. Ethan’s mouth was so red, his skin unevenly flushed, a fine sheen of sweat highlighting his broad shoulders and the slope of his throat. Spencer thought he might die.

“This is,” Spencer managed to say, “kind of a lot.”

“Hey.” Ethan put a hand on Spencer’s thigh, immediately gentle.

It was a relief when Ethan laid his hot slim body beside Spencer’s, chest to bare chest, pressing sweet closed-mouth kisses to the line of his jaw and his earlobe. He curled his damp hand around Spencer’s hip, sneaking his fingers under Spencer’s clothing, intimate but not overwhelming. Spencer breathed.

“It’s not bad,” Spencer reassured Ethan.

“I know,” Ethan said into Spencer’s neck. The warm closeness of his body drew the sheen of sweat from Spencer’s skin, his temples and throat, his arm where Ethan’s naked body pressed against it, the joints of his thighs and the backs of his knees still trapped in his clothing. “Can I just touch you?”

Spencer nodded and Ethan curled his hand around his cock again, breathing hard against Spencer’s mouth though Spencer was barely touching him at all. Spencer curled toward him, one hand sliding absently over the smooth taut skin of Ethan’s side, and Ethan caught his mouth in a deep kiss. Ethan’s hands were so sure on his body; he predicted when Spencer’s back would arch involuntarily, pressing them ever closer together, and moved with him, the rhythm of his hand on Spencer hardly stuttering. Spencer’s mouth felt swollen and hot; his body felt simultaneously present and very distant, wild with want.

“Come on, baby,” Ethan mumbled against Spencer’s mouth, and he slid a thigh between Spencer’s legs and rolled him onto his back, bearing down on him with the weight of his body while twisting his thumb over the head of his cock in a way that made Spencer buck and keen.

“I,” Spencer gasped. He grabbed blindly at Ethan’s hot, sweat-slick skin, his back and shoulders, the nape of his neck, his hair damp with sweat. “I,” he said again, unable to even continue.

“Let go, baby,” Ethan murmured.

Spencer did. He shuddered, body twisting and tensing as the pleasure ripped through him, his skin and muscles, skittering up his spine and through all his nerves, his veins, tightening the alveoli in his lungs so he couldn’t even breathe for a violent, sun-bright moment.

He blinked back into himself slowly, the slide of his sweaty skin against Ethan’s, the gentle way Ethan touched the hollow of one hipbone, avoiding Spencer’s oversensitized cock and the come drying on his stomach.

“Sex is… very wet,” Spencer said hoarsely.

Ethan tucked his face into Spencer’s shoulder and laughed, a low, delighted sound that Spencer felt through his whole body. Spencer wriggled a half-numb arm out from under Ethan and looped it around Ethan’s shoulders, feeling weightless and luminous.

“If that’s all you have to say, I think I’d better try harder next time,” Ethan said. His voice was light but when he drew back to look at Spencer his skin was flushed, his eyes almost unbearably tender.

“Oh,” Spencer said, mortified, “my god, no, that’s not, I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

But Ethan was smiling at him, smiling, still, when he kissed him quiet. Spencer felt nearly boneless under his touch.

“Anyway,” Spencer said, then kissed Ethan again, “I think next time I have to do you.”

Ethan hummed against his mouth. “When you’re ready, baby.”

A sweet shudder passed through Spencer at the endearment. “Okay,” Spencer said. “Okay.”

And it was.


End file.
